Lost ! Advice.

I'm hoping that if my Samsung 'smart' TV is spying on me, I might be able to train it to tell me where I've put my car keys, my favourite gloves, my new secateurs, the vacuum cleaner ...

yes, they live in this house

I wonder what they're making with my scribbled note

Have non of you heard of the Borrowers?

Swear! Sadly I do it regularly. Sometimes it turns up, sometimes it doesn't.

Last summer I dropped my bag and everything spilled out, people helped me to pick everything up. Two days later I am looking in said bag for my Disabled parking card, no sign of it, looked everywhere in the house, nothing.
Assumed someone had pocketed it or it had got lost. Applied for a new one, the day it arrived I was looking through some old photographs to show a friend and there it was. How I have no idea, it took me 40 minutes to find said photos, so how the heck did it get in the box and in the envelope with them.
I had to get a Police report to get a new one so a lot of hassle.

Talking about cameras - we were walking in the Lakes and met someone who had lost their camera. It was on top of a hill above Ullswater. I said a prayer to the Jewish equivalent of St. Anthony and a few minutes later found the camera among some rough grass.
You're supposed to say the prayer and put some cash into a charity box, which we have. He's worked for me a few times, changing my mindset with fresh ideas to search.

I find things usually turn up eventually when you've stopped looking. I was once convinced that a stranger had walked into the house (always unlocked as we live in a village) and taken my purse as I knew it had been in the house. I was just going to the hairdresser and had no cash or cards so took a cheque book and got cash out of the bank to pay. When I got home I found the purse in the cupboard under the stairs, and remembered then that it was in my hand when I went looking in the cupboard for something!
My husband lost his mobile phone for months and i bought his a smart phone for Christmas. But a couple of months later he found it right in the back corner of the side pocket (or whatever its called) of the car door. Sadly he's gone back to using his old simple phone and stopped trying to get to grips with his smart phone.
However he lost a camera aboiut a year ago and it's not yet turned up.
Also it's surprising how often things turn up in th first place you looked!

DD1 has this, three times over the last few years, brand new items of clothes, still with their tags on, just brought home, then never seen again. We have both searched everywhere. She has recently moved and they haven't turned up. It's so frusturating!

I don't tend to lose things but regularly mislay things. Early January 2016 I mislaid my new funky red reading specs. After hunting everywhere for them I had to concede defeat and they were then classed as officially lost. However in December I was in the attic fetching down the Christmas deccies when I spotted my red specs sitting on top of a box. I was ecstatic! I do get annoyed at myself though when I mislay things and usually blame my husband for shifting the missing item.

If you can´t find something, sit down, relax (very hard to do, I know), think about something else, get up, walk around,take your time, go to your garden (if you have one), look at the plants, if you live in a flat, walk around, look at the plants, water them, talk to them, clear your mind, the zen sort of thing, then go back, slowly, when was the last time I had my glasses, where did I go after that, and after that. Guaranteed, they will turn up.

Isn't it annoying I am always doing that. I try to retrace my steps to where I was when I had the object or whatever it was. I am always loosing my glasses. Sometimes I get so annoyed with myself it stresses me out, so once I am a bit calmer I usually find what I am looking for.

I maje lusts of things to do/remember and even if I lose the list I can usually remember what was on it .
Doesn't help with objects though ....
Was convinced I'd put on and lost a favourite necklace while out the other day It was on the bathroom windowsill...

Some years ago, when I was still working, my employer was very good about sending us on various courses, one of the ones I went on was a "Memory" course. There are various internet links to similar. The basic idea, which I still use, is that you imagine a route through a room in your home, one that you know best (the kitchen?), make stops along the way, starting from the right (the shelf, the cooker, the surface, the sink, the bin, the back door, etc.), to make a route round your kitchen that is very familiar, count them (most people can deal with about 10), then assign an item to each one. For example, you want to remember (as I do) that I need to take round to my mother´s, some clean towels, teabags and an air freshener. I imagine on the first post, as I enter the kitchen, to my right, a pile of clean towels, on the second stop, the surface, a packet of teabags, and in the sink an air freshener. I remember that I checked three posts, so there must be three things that I need to take. I try to imagine (not always possible) humorous situations, which will be easier to remember, ie. clean towels levitating above the surface. I might not have explained very well, but it does get easier with practice.

I have several strategies:
-go back in my memory to the time when the object was lost to give a likely location
-think about the lost object and when I lost it to lodge the loss in my subconscious which often throws up the actual location randomly
-launch a methodical search of all the likely places
-enlist the memory and search skills of others

This is a mix of rational and random approaches which usually works.

On a visit to Knock, like a holy Blackpool in Ireland, I bought a card with a prayer on it to St Anthony. I was telling the family about it and opened my bag to show them. It wasn't there but after a quick retrace of my steps I found that I'd left it on the shop counter! This was 20 years ago and I haven't improved, although I still have the card in my purse!

We lost the keys to the summerhouse and shed, searched absolutely everywhere, eventually had to get the locks redone at a cost of £200. Then six months later, I came across an old glasses case I never use, and the old ones were in there - courtesy of young grandson we think!

Yes, exactly, retrace your steps. I find most things. My husband does not have the patience or the self-reflection, he usually blames me!

I panic, then stop and go through every single bag of declutter stuff and it's normally there. That is telling me I really must finish clearing the house. Hope you find it.

Please tell St Anthony that at his recent review, I found his performance lack lustre...............

My fabulous glasses, Dior frames, with diamonds vanished off the face of the earth..........

Actually sometimes if I go through what I was doing just before I picked 'it' up and trace my steps I usually find what I have lost. If that doesn't work I just say 'Mr Nobody has it' and walk away. It turns up sooner or later.

Last week I spent ages looking for a spare pair of glasses so I could get the lens changed at the opticians. Nowhere to be found, so I stopped looking for them. On Sunday they turned up on my bookshelf! Don't ask where they had been, or how they turned up on a shelf that had been cleared the week before because I do not know the answer to that.

Well, St Anthony didn't know either.

The recycling went today.

I opened new make up, went out, came back and it's totally disappeared. I emptied all the recycling bins, kitchen bin and no sign of it. I can't find it anywhere?
I can't blame DD as she is abroad on holiday. Even At. Anthony can't find out. Am I going mad?

I ask the house when I mislay things. It's scary how often it works!

Has anyone any idea where the keys to our patio doors are?

Badenkate, you are a star, thank you. I evidently didn't search down far enough, (but it is in quite small print) ?.
Holdthetonic, it hadn't got as far as the trash can. I will have to go into town tomorrow and have another look.